La Iguana Chocolate

Let’s keep calm! Let’s eat organic chocolate! And let’s listen to the sounds of nature!

We worked 5 days as volunteers at the family-run La Iguana chocolate farm.

La Iguana is a small organic farm, located in the quiet mountain village of Mastatal, between San Jose and the Pacific coast.

The Salazar Garcia family is producing chocolate for more than 25 years. Together with other volunteers from Canada/Quebec, USA, Ireland, Mexico and England, we learned how chocolate is made from the bean to the bar. We not only helped roasting, peeling and grinding the beans, but we also formed the chocolate.

We enjoyed getting to know all the other volunteers. To our surprise two young women – similar to us – came all the way from Ireland to Central America. They came from Galway and Kerry and look forward to move to Dublin during the end of the summer.

Mastatal is not only a peaceful, isolated village. It is also an environmental learning and sustainable living center. Besides La Iguana, there are at least 3 other farms in this area, which welcome volunteers. We met people from the Rancho Mastatal and from Villas Mastatal.